So... do we fire up the gas chambers?

I've been kicking around the Islam issue with my best friends via email for some time now. The content of those discussions will remain private (unless my friends give me permission to print their emails). But in snooping around the blogosphere and taking a gander at what the big boys say, I thought you might benefit from a peek at Steve den Beste's blog, where you can read a rather long, history-loaded essay about parallels between defeating Japan and defeating Islam.

What do you think? Do you buy the "Islam is a religion of peace" argument, or do you suspect that the deafening silence of Muslim moderates indicates a far, far deeper problem than we might want to admit, a problem not confined to the fundamentalists?

I used to belong to the Huston Smith school of thinking. Smith is known for his excellent survey text, The World's Religions, in which he makes no bones about describing major faith traditions in a deliberately compassionate way. I certainly don't blame Smith for this; his purpose in that volume wasn't critique. But if you read Smith and no one else, you might well end up with a falsely Pollyanna-ish view of world religions.

If you're looking for a Westerner's critical appraisal of Islam, you can't go wrong grabbing something by Bernard Lewis, who occupies a godlike position in the academic pantheon. I read his essay collection, Islam and the West, along with several of his shorter articles. Whether you agree with Lewis or not, you'll find his style clear and to the point.

Is Islam a religion of peace? I actually take a Buddhist stance on this question: there's a reificationist assumption that Islam (or any given religion) has a core. Instead, if we view Islam (and other religions) as a process, as a living phenomenon, we immediately realize that it becomes very hard to make a blanket statement about it. Islam has over a billion adherents; it's simply huge (OK, that's a blanket statement, I realize). Calling it "a religion of violence" is just as unjust as calling it a religion of peace. Islam doesn't exist outside of its practitioners; neither does any other religious tradition. So in answer to the falsely dualistic question at the beginning of this paragraph, my answer is: Islam is what it is, right now. Take it on its own terms. Realize it's a multifarious entity, and dangerous generalizations about it can lead to unnecessary prejudices (the overly wary and militant), or might even get you killed (the overly unwary and incautious).

Unhappy that I'm not giving you a neat, yes/no answer? Well, then I have to invite you to slurp my leprous, hairy gonads, you simpleminded dog. Life isn't black and white: it's in pulsating Technicolor. There is a doctrinaire, dogmatic fundamentalist tendency to reduce the world to stark dualism-- the us/them fence, the right/wrong border, the true/false faith claim. And it's a load of shit that gets humanity in trouble again and again, this dualistic thinking, this venal attachment to fixed concepts and ideology. I fully agree with the Buddhists about the unnecessary and profound suffering we create for ourselves, just from our wrong thinking.

My feeling: I believe Islam's been put on notice, at least in America, if not in Europe. We as a nation are beginning to take a dim view of its tenets, the attitudes it breeds among adherents of all convictions, from liberal to moderate to radical. Islam isn't going to enjoy the privileged, unchallenged position it's had in liberal American academia for much longer. Europe will be its solace on that front.

But now that you've read den Beste's article... do you agree that Islam needs to have its will broken? I admit that, as a non-Muslim American, the argument carries a cruel charm, a sort of dirty attractiveness. But it also smacks of genocide-- the systematic elimination of the members of a cultural phenomenon, until the remaining members finally cry uncle. Are we willing to push our preemptive campaign that far? Does genocide actually work?

No answers; just questions. Email me at bighominid@hotmail.com (HAIRY CHASMS in the subject line, please) with your reactions. Maybe I'll post your email on this site.
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